October 30, 2018

Michael McClymond’s majestic two-volume work The Devil’s Redemption: A New History and Interpretation of Christian Universalism (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018) is a landmark work in the study of Christian universalism, one of the most significant analyses and critiques of that tradition ever published. It is stunning in both the breadth and depth of its research. As such, no academic attempt to engage universal salvation in a Christian context can afford to ignore it. While I find the theological critique inadequate to the task of undermining Christian universalism per se (as I shall argue below), there is a lot in McClymond’s book, including his critiques of various specific universalist theologies, with which I concur.

The central thesis at its heart of the book is very simple: Universalism does not arise from biblical or Christian theological instincts, but is an alien import that first emerged and flourished in heretical gnostic sects and was subsequently planted into Christianity by Origen. The modern revival of universalism from the late seventeenth century onwards similarly drank deeply from the wells of esotericism, especially from the poisoned well of Jakob Böhme, whose heterodox theology lies somewhere behind many, perhaps most, modern versions of universalism (DR, 22). Thus, despite the Christian language with which universal salvation dresses itself in an attempt to appear at home in the church, its origins and underlying theological structure are, according to McClymond, antithetical to orthodox Christianity. He hopes that once we see the dubious origins of the universalist idea, in both its ancient and modern versions, we will be enabled to see why it is so problematic.1

1. Thomas Talbott thinks that McClymond is in danger of falling foul of the genetic fallacy, the fallacy of dismissing a view on the basis of its questionable origins. Some of McClymond’s arguments do teeter on the edge of this fallacy, but within the overall context of the book the attempt to expose the allegedly dubious origins of universalism function as part of a cumulative case, standing alongside other arguments that seek to engage the theological case directly. So I do not think McClymond guilty of the genetic fallacy even though there were times when I was reading the book that I felt he was on the brink.